Movie Review: The Disaster Artist

There are bad movies and then there is The Room. Directed, produced and starring Tommy Wiseau, the film has been deemed by many critics as the worst movie of all time. The dialogue is ridiculous, the story makes zero sense and Wiseau’s acting is unbelievably bad as Johnny the banker. It’s funny how things work out sometimes, because over the years The Room has gained a popular cult following. The film found a way to charm a certain audience by being so bad, it’s actually good spawning a book about the production and a big screen version about Wiseau’s turbulent shoot titled The Disaster Artist.

Just like Wiseau’s wacky tale of friends living in San Fransisco, James Franco both directs and stars in The Disaster Artist as the odd Wiseau. Franco has the perfect weird vibe to play the mysterious figure who befriends a baby-faced aspiring actor named Greg Sestero played by Franco’s younger brother Dave. The two Francos work great together with Dave playing the straight man of the duo reacting to all the incoherent nonsense that flies out of Tommy’s mouth. After deciding to make the move to Los Angeles, the duo are rejected again and again for roles since they are both lousy actors. Frustrated and sick of waiting for their big break, Wiseau decides to write, direct and fund a movie they can both star in to mark their arrival in Hollywood. The rest you would say is movie history (for all the wrong reasons).

James Franco is widely entertaining morphing into the oddball Tommy Wiseau from the second you meet him in The Disaster Artist. You can’t wait to see what this weirdo is going to do or say next. Franco does some of the best acting work of his career by performing some of the worst acting anyone has ever witnessed recreating scenes from The Room with Wiseau’s unique method of performing. Franco manages to make you feel uncomfortable while also finding sympathy for the peculiar outsider who seems to live a lonely life. James Franco gives a funny and oddly sweet performance that carries the entire film becoming this real life figure at the center of the worst movie ever.

The only negative concerning The Disaster Artist is Franco as the director choosing to rush through the parts of the movie focusing on the film’s troubled shoot. Franco spends a lot of time focusing on the blossoming friendship of Tommy and Greg instead of the hilarious drama that surrounded the production of The Room. The shoot isn’t give the proper time it deserved to reach this film’s full potential. The editing process of The Room is completely ignored, which seems like a waste of potential laughs considering the quality of footage the post production crew had to work with.

Franco definitely leaves you wanting more and not in the good way when it comes to covering the doomed filmmakers attempt at making his own personal disasterpiece. Luckily James Franco the actor is able to bail himself out as a director thanks to the work he does as The Disaster Artist‘s main star. Franco is a human car crash at times that you just can’t take your eyes off of. He’ll make you laugh, cringe and think twice about making fun on someone who is just trying to fulfill their own personal dreams even if the end result is not what they intended it to be in terms of audience reaction.